Across the United States, the number of operating automotive dealerships remained steady in 2017.

That's according to the latest Automotive Franchise Activity Report from Urban Science released Tuesday.

There were a total of 18,213 dealerships rooftops as of Jan. 1 — a 0.2-percent increase from a total of 18,170 on Jan. 1, 2017, according to the report.

The sales throughput for last year was 947 per dealership, which is down 18 units from 2016 levels, said Urban Science's global director of data Mitchell Phillips in a news release.

“With the stable dealership count trend as we have seen for the past several years and an industry forecast that is slightly declining from 2017, we expect the sales throughput to decline in 2018,” Phillips explained.

“Over the last seven years, the dealership network has set a new normal pattern of stability. The data shows that 97 percent of local markets had virtually no net change (+/- 1 dealership),” he said.

The number of dealerships increased most significantly in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Missouri and New York, according to Phillips.

Below is a list of the top six states to add the most dealerships since last year, along with the number of new dealerships in each state:

• Texas, 15 dealerships
• Florida, 11 dealerships
• Pennsylvania, 10 dealerships
• Mississippi, five dealerships
• Missouri, five dealerships
• New York, five dealerships

In addition to automotive manufacturers Urban Science' data sources also include feeds from phone and field verification.

Urban Science has been collecting information for its Automotive Franchise Activity Report since 1990.